A comparative molecular dynamics study on thermostability of human and chicken prion proteins

To compare the thermostabilities of human and chicken normal cellular prion proteins (HuPrPC and CkPrPC), molecular dynamics (MD) simulations were performed for both proteins at an ensemble level (10 parallel simulations at 400 K and 5 parallel simulations at 300 K as a control). It is found that the thermostability of HuPrPC is comparable with that of CkPrPC, which implicates that the non-occurrence of prion diseases in non-mammals cannot be completely attributed to the thermodynamic properties of non-mammalian PrPC.